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If you're reading this, you may have nothing better to do. Well do I have a proposition for you!

There are currently 423 questions with "Solved" in the title. If you've got the time, pick out a few, and see if the question needs editing. If you're feeling frisky, edit it. While you're in there, it'd be really cool if you could get rid of the 'Solved' word in the title (where appropriate).

Banning the word 'Solved' out of titles has already been asked, so this is totally not a feature request for that.

Here's an example of a question I just edited. Your edit doesn't need to be that extensive, but it couldn't hurt.

Edit:

After seeing the queue go steadily from 423 to 0 (Thank You!), I (on a lark) took a look at [Fixed] (17 results) and [Answered] (13 results). These would be cool to take out too, just to make this a more complete request.

As Bart brings up, there are a few problems:

  1. "Solved" (even non problematic uses) were edited out, while [Solved] (279 results) remains. There's no justice in this universe.
  2. I made a mistake in asking this question, insofar as I didn't make it really clear that if you take the time to edit a post, you should edit more than one word. Let me make that clear: Try to make good edits, and good edits are more than just removing one word.
  3. If you're editing out [Solved] or [Answered] or [Fixed], make sure you're also cleaning up the question. New users have a tendency to also include the answer in the question when they do that.
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  • 5
    Thank you George, for giving me purpose in life!
    – Mike
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:37
  • 1
    And sort by newest so you don't bump old questions.
    – Doorknob
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:38
  • 9
    I will edit the title of this question with [solved] after the task is completed. :)
    – Himanshu
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:42
  • 4
    It might be wise to explicitly state that you're targeting questions with "Solved" as a (pseudo-)status. Not those who have a valid use of the word "solved". (That's at least what I'm assuming you're going for?)
    – Bart
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:48
  • @Bart - May be we can search with this keyword: title:[solved]
    – Himanshu
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:52
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    @Doorknob Wouldn't sorting by newest just mean that, by the time we hit the old questions, they'll be even older?
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Mar 19, 2013 at 12:52
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    Okay, that is annoying. Before I can edit a post someone else has jumped in to merely remove the word "solved". Please give the whole post some attention if you're going to bump it anyway.
    – Bart
    Mar 19, 2013 at 13:00
  • @Bart Yea, that's why I tried to emphasize doing actual edting on the post.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 13:04
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    @GeorgeStocker Would you mind deleting the closed ones first? Not all of them are delete worthy, but there's no reason for those that are to be bumped by over-enthusiastic editors.
    – yannis
    Mar 19, 2013 at 13:37
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    @Yannis Out of those, there's only one where I think the community should intervene to delete; the others I've edited or deleted as appropriate.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 13:55
  • @GraceNo oh yeah good point :P
    – Doorknob
    Mar 19, 2013 at 15:11
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    And the search is now empty. Wow, this community moves quickly :)
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 19, 2013 at 16:58
  • Ehm, I don't wish to rain on your highly successful parade, but were you really suggesting to removed the word "solved" from every title? Because there were a fair amount of questions where that was a legitimate word to use. And all the really problematic ones were missed.
    – Bart
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:10
  • @Bart Parade rainer. Nice catch - I erroneously thought that "solved" would also catch "[solved]". Shucks.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:13
  • @GeorgeStocker: if you delete them, they won't be problematic anymore ;)
    – user7116
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:21

2 Answers 2

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+100

Your wish is our command :).

I think I managed 350+. Subsequently, I maxed out my close votes and votes, and topped the editors table for the week.

Shall I end this by doctoring the title of this question too? :P

EDIT: I've now done [Fixed] and [Answered] too :)

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  • 1
    Great job... Now, about [Fixed] and [Answered]...
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:01
  • @GeorgeStocker Done :). There is one on Fixed that uses freeimagehosting though, why is that a problem? It won't let me edit it.
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:10
  • What are you referring to?
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:10
  • @GeorgeStocker Try editing the title and saving this: stackoverflow.com/questions/11586369/…
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:11
  • @mattytommo That url was blacklisted at some point. Obviously the question was posted before the blacklisting, and now it's not letting you edit it because it checks the blacklist on save. I don't remember exactly why it was blacklisted (and can't find the relevant Meta q), but I remember it being problematic.
    – yannis
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:11
  • Well now that's just rotten.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:12
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    @mattytommo I really appreciate your effort, but it seems all you have done to each post is remove the offending word. Could you next time please check if any of the posts you're editing (and bumping) have other things that need to be fixed as well?
    – Bart
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:13
  • @GeorgeStocker I saved the pictures to my computer, then re-uploaded them and edited the question :)
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:13
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    @mattytommo: I don't think that was the right fix for that question. Should have been a roll-back to the initial revision - it's a whole new question introduced in revision two, and none of the answers were updated for that.
    – Mat
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:15
  • @Bart Whilst I admit I wasn't extremely thorough with each question, I like to think I did highlight some of the glaringly obvious mistakes, plus closing/flagging where appropriate.
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:20
  • @Mat You're probably right, I wasn't entirely sure on that. I've rolled back, but put in my edits to the images.
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:22
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    I just took a short look through your edit history. If the 7 most recent edits you made for this call to action, only one of them seemed like no further edits were needed for the post. Of the remaining six all of them need significant edits to bring them into shape. Now it seems that the call to action is going to be going through your edit history fixing all of the posts that you've "fixed", rather than just searching for content with one of these three words in the title. That's generating more work, not less (and likely meaning many of these posts will never be fixed).
    – Servy
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:53
  • @Servy If that's the consensus, I'd be happy to revert everything I did as part of this.
    – Mathew Thompson
    Mar 19, 2013 at 17:58
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    @mattytommo Please don't go and revert them. Just next time give them a bit more care. That you handled 350+ of them is great. But if you would have done 35 instead with some more attention, 9 other users (me included) would have happily done 35 as well. I might go through some of them later on, so don't worry. It's just that cases like these are excellent opportunities to increase the site's quality. (P.s. Thanks for your efforts though. I'm not trying to single you out by any means. I saw several other such cases as well.)
    – Bart
    Mar 19, 2013 at 18:10
5

The demon is back...

At first there were 376, now there is 277 results with [SOLVED] in the title - update4

We shall clean this up!

To anybody willing to help clean up, be sure to solve ALL the issues in the post, not just the title!

Also, if the original updated his question with the answer, please edit that answer out of the question and put it in a community-wiki post as an answer to the question. Make sure that what we wrote is not already in another answer though, if it is, just remove it from the question.

Putting the answer in a community-wiki post will make it possible for the original poster of the question to edit the answer easily, if he wants to.

The number is going down! Great! But it's not going down that fast. A thing you can do if you want is add a tag where you are good, so the number of result is smaller AND it's easier for you to clean the post.

Some quick links :

Reminder of a list of issues to look for :

  • The question needs to be closed
  • The answer is within the question body (Put it in CW if it's not alreayd in an answer)
  • The formatting is bad
  • The grammar/capitalization is lacking
  • Tagging is not adapted to the post
  • There is noise (salutations/thanks/signature/please help)
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    Oh dear God. Next feature request, ban [solved] in the title.
    – George Stocker
    Apr 4, 2013 at 16:05
  • @George And a lot of these posts have answers updated in their question... That's going to take a lot of clean-up (and community-wiki posts)!
    – Hugo Dozois
    Apr 4, 2013 at 16:07
  • @GeorgeStocker Wow... What can be done with that? stackoverflow.com/posts/15537351/revisions or that stackoverflow.com/posts/7898806/revisions ... Where high reputation users added Solved to others posts
    – Hugo Dozois
    Apr 4, 2013 at 16:11
  • I don't consider those users "High Reputation" users, but there isn't much that can be done except to comment and let them know that shouldn't be done.
    – George Stocker
    Apr 4, 2013 at 17:07
  • Also note those users had less reputation at the time of those edits. They're quite old.
    – Servy
    Apr 4, 2013 at 18:40
  • @Servy agreed for the second one. Though the first one is few days old!
    – Hugo Dozois
    Apr 4, 2013 at 18:42

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